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Journal Journal: I Won't Be Here As Much

Howdy All,

I just wanted to give a quick adios-type message. I started my new job at SpaceX about a month ago and am still getting settled in my new home/lifestyle. One thing that is apparent, however, is that working at SpaceX is going to keep me hopping. I've spent a couple weeks working more than 60 hours already, and I think that may be somewhat common. That said, I don't really have time to keep up on news stories as much as I have for the last three years.

Comment Re:Another step (Score 1) 127

It is always amazing to me when folks are willing to hold up a piece of fictional art to contest a15,000 year old (how long have modern humans been around exactly?) historical trend. We've been developing earth-shattering technologies that could be used to royally obliterate ourselves for awhile now. Think about it, designing a metallic blade that could, literally, break every other blade wielded against it back during the various transitions from stone-age to bronze-age probably convinced many of the folks at the time that the individual wielding the metallic blade was all but invincible. And yet, somehow one metal blade wielding psychopath didn't conquer the whole world (though, some tried).

Technology breakthroughs have been occuring for thousands of years. The nuclear bomb, dynamite, machine guns, rifles, muskets, long bows, hell, even something as simple as putting a rotten corpse on a catapult and flinging it at your enemies could be considered technology. We've managed not to kill ourselves yet.

Does this new technology have the potential to destroy the human race? Maybe it will eventually, but so have a dozen other inventions throughout history. One badass, epic science fiction T.V. series is not an adequate bit of evidence to hold up and dispute this trend.

Comment Re:I actually agree with the Democrat here (Score 1) 239

I think my favorite thing about your posts, Grishnakh, is that you post one or two comments in a story that interests you that are pretty insightful and frank, but simple enough to not be rude or flamebaitish. Then when someone replies to your posts, you almost always respond with a link and a direct insult on their intelligence. It's quite amusing.
Printer

3D Printer For Your Kids 195

kkleiner writes "Two developers from Shapeways and i.materialise have designed a 3D printer for your ten-year-old. The prototype, named Origo, would allow children to easily design objects in 3Dtin and then print them safely in their home with minimal adult supervision. Could it be the last toy you ever have to buy for your kids?"
The Internet

US Intelligence Mining Your Social Network Data 240

bs0d3 writes "U.S. Intelligence has hired social scientists to mine the vast resources of the Internet — Web searches and Twitter messages, Facebook and blog posts, the digital location trails generated by billions of cellphones. They intend to use this info to track sociological laws of human behavior — enabling them to predict political crises, revolutions and other forms of social and economic instability. Privacy advocates are deeply skeptical of the project, saying it reminds them of Total Information Awareness, a 9/11 Pentagon program that proposed hunting for potential attackers by identifying patterns in vast collections of public and private data: telephone calling records, e-mail, travel data, visa and passport information, and credit card transactions. In a recent budget proposal, the defense agency argues that its analysis can expose terrorist cells and other groups by tracking their meetings, rehearsals and sharing of material and money transfers."

Comment Re:Money, money, money (Score 1) 236

I am not sure cutting down the size of the military drastically is necessarily the best way to go after the bloated DoD budget. You could just as easily scrap and cancel a number of government-military-industiral-complex boondoggles and save a lot of money. I mean, if you look at some of the weapon systems being developed by Lockheed-Martin, Northrop-Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics (is that what they're still called nowadays?), etc. you'll see that they are still, essentially, fighting the cold war. It could even be funny if it weren't so god-damned expensive.

Comment Re:Blaming the wrong people (Score 1) 236

So his actual complaint is that, while President Obama stood up and advocated developing commercial launch instead of the SLS, when push came to shove, he just accepted the Congressional budget that was written despit all the grand-standing?

Interesting. I wonder if he thinks President Obama should have kept vetoing budgets until SLS got cut down to a size that was reasonable....for whatever definition of reasonable you like.

Comment Re:"incident to arrest" (Score 1) 462

I hate to bring reality into this discussion, but the bill that was passed allows the police to search phones of people "incident to arrest".

I hate to bring the Constitution into your pedantry but what the hell does that matter? The fourth amendment is pretty damned clear that an officer of the law needs a warrant to search your belongings. That guaranteed right doesn't get pissed out the window just because a bastard in a uniform slapped a pair of 'cuffs on you. If you are arrested, and if the contents of your cell phone can be reasonably demonstrated to be pertinent to the legal case that you are being held for, then let the prosecutor prove it to a judge and get a warrant to search it just like they are supposed to do with a locked box.

I don't know what your civics class taught you, but as a California native I was taught that folks suspected of a crime (under arrest but not yet convicted) still have the same Constitutional rights that all citizens of the United States are delineated.

Censorship

NYTimes Sues US Gov't To Know How It Interprets the PATRIOT Act 186

hydrofix writes "Techdirt has been following the story of the DoJ's classified interpretation of the PATRIOT Act. Specifically, it's all about Section 215, the so-called 'business-records provision,' which empowers the FBI to get businesses to turn over any records it deems relevant to a security investigation. Senators Ron Ryden and Mark Udall have been pushing the government to reveal how it uses these provisions to deploy 'dragnets' for massive amounts of information on private citizens 'without any connection to terrorism or espionage,' a secret reinterpretation that is 'inconsistent with the public's understanding of these laws.' After NYTimes reporter Charlie Savage had his Freedom of Information request denied, the NYTimes has now sued the government (PDF) to reveal how it interprets the very law under which it's required to operate."

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